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Diversifying the Racial and Ethnic Composition of the Physician Workforce
- Neil R. Powe, MD, MPH, MBA; and
- Lisa A. Cooper, MD, MPH
- From the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research, The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, Maryland.
This position paper from the American College of Physicians states that a diverse workforce of health professionals is an important part of eliminating disparities among racial and ethnic groups in the United States (1). An implicit assumption underlying this position is that increasing the number of ethnic minority providers will not only reduce health care disparities but also improve the health of minorities. Arguably, the most definitive and direct evidence for this assumption would be a clinical trial that randomly assigned patients to minority and majority physicians and followed them longitudinally while assessing changes in objective measures of health status. This trial does not exist and is extremely unlikely to be performed because many patients would object to random assignment to physicians. Choosing a physician is a very personal matter that most people who have a …
